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Pharmacognosy is the study of crude drugs obtained from medicinal plants, animals, fungi, and other natural sources. [1] The American Society of Pharmacognosy defines pharmacognosy as "the study of the physical, chemical, biochemical , and biological properties of drugs, drug substances, or potential drugs or drug substances of natural origin ...
In China, Japan, India, and Germany, there is a great deal of interest in and support for the search for new drugs from higher plants. [4] For example, the Herbalome Project was launched in China in 2008 and aims to use high throughput sequencing and toxicity testing to identify active components in traditional herbal remedies.
Around the end of the 19th century, the mood of pharmacy turned against medicinal plants, as enzymes often modified the active ingredients when whole plants were dried, and alkaloids and glycosides purified from plant material started to be preferred. Drug discovery from plants continued to be important through the 20th century and into the ...
Crude drugs are drugs of plant, animal and microbial origin [clarification needed] that contain natural substances that have undergone only the processes of collection and drying. [ dubious – discuss ] The term natural substances refers to those substances found in nature that have not had man-made changes made in their molecular structure.
The opioid analgesic drug morphine is a natural product derived from the plant Papaver somniferum Plants are a major source of complex and highly structurally diverse chemical compounds ( phytochemicals ), this structural diversity attributed in part to the natural selection of organisms producing potent compounds to deter herbivory ( feeding ...
Many synthetic and semisynthetic drugs are structural modifications of the alkaloids, which were designed to enhance or change the primary effect of the drug and reduce unwanted side-effects. [208] For example, naloxone , an opioid receptor antagonist , is a derivative of thebaine that is present in opium .
Sinecatechins, the first botanical drug approved by the US FDA, is an extract from the leaves of Camellia sinensis.. A botanical drug is defined in the United States Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act as a botanical product that is marketed as diagnosing, mitigating, treating, or curing a disease; a botanical product in turn, is a finished, labeled product that contains ingredients from plants.
Hashish is a cannabis concentrate product composed of compressed or purified preparations of stalked resin glands, called trichomes, from the plant. It is defined by the 1961 UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs (Schedule I and IV) as "the separated resin, whether crude or purified, obtained from the cannabis plant".